Hello and “the implicit web”
January 5, 2007
I am somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about technology, media and, most recently, social media. I love reading blogs and have learned a tremendous amount over the past year or so about how people are thinking about technology, media and innovation. Recently, I’ve been posting a lot to other people’s blogs, whenever I agree or, more often than not, disagree with what has been posted. Now, I think that I’ve reached the point that I want to share my thoughts with the blog world and see what people think about what I have to say. Chances are, nobody will read this blog and this will be a better outlet for me than to bother my friends and coworkers…either way it should be fun.
This post obviously doesn’t have much substance to it. The one thing that I will say is that my favorite blogger out there is Fred Wilson. He provides a lot of incredibly valuable insight on issues and trends…something that isn’t often achieved in blogs. After reading his blog for a few months, I feel like I have an idea of the type of person that he is.
His most recent blog post that has really made me think is http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/12/2007_the_implic.html. I don’t have time to write about it now, but I encourage everybody to read it. I think that Fred has picked up on the key trend that will spur innovation moving forward: now that the wave of Web 2.0 companies has made people comfortable with contributing personal information to the internet, the next step is for them to allow companies and “the web” to improve their lives by analyzing the information and suggesting how they can improve their actions. Personally, I think that these new services will have to come in the form of new companies because I cannot think of a company out there that has built a brand associated with trust that users will allow into their lives. The closest company out there is google; however, I agree with a lot of blog posts that I have read lately that google’s drive for profitability and to cross-sell products in their product line is starting to lead to a loss of trust. Either way, Google’s competitors will need to either acquire and manage or establish brands that the user can trust.
